Germany gives 130 million Euros support to Ghana

Accra, Jan. 12, GNA - The German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development has made a commitment of 130 million Euros to Ghana under its financial and technical cooperation with Ghana for the period from 2009 to 2011.

This new pledge of approximately 275 Million Ghana Cedis represents an increase of more than 60 per cent. It was made in line with Germany's aim of giving particular support to partner countries that succeed in practising good governance, a release from the Embassy of the Federal Republic Germany in Accra said on Tuesday.

The release said the new commitment raises the total German development cooperation support to Ghana since independence to more than 2,400 million Ghana Cedis (1,180 million Euros).

Germany made the commitment at inter-governmental negotiations between the Republic of Ghana and the Federal Republic of Germany on 17 and 18 December 2009 in Bonn, Germany.

The intergovernmental dialogue highlighted the strong commitment of the Republic of Ghana to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and to promoting broad-based growth.

The German delegation acknowledged Ghana's successes in reducing poverty as well as playing a leading role in ensuring regional stability and democratisation.

Both delegations stressed the importance of the recent oil and gas discovery to Ghana's sustainable growth and the need to adopt international best practice for the exploitation of the resource, the release said.

"The Ghanaian-German bilateral development cooperation is based on Ghanaian strategies and implemented within the framework of the Ghana -Joint Assistance Strategy', signed by all principal development partners."

The release said; "in this context it was agreed to continue the German assistance in the existing focal areas of sustainable economic and financial development; agriculture and decentralization".

Additionally, Germany had scaled-up its commitment for direct budget support in the framework of the Multi Donor Budget Support (MDBS) to the tune of 55 Million Euro (more that 130 Million Ghana Cedis) in September 2009. This was reconfirmed at the negotiations.

At a meeting with the participants at the negotiations, Gudrun Kopp, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, said Germany would continue to direct German-Ghanaian cooperation towards future-oriented areas adding; "by strengthening market orientation and performance-based incentive systems, we will continue to contribute to sustainable economic growth that will benefit large sections of the population".

GNA